I've seen that site before, there is a massive amount of info on that site.

Nice find. People often have this false rosey memory of how they think Prince albums were percieved back in the day. But people forget that along with their praise from supporters, his albums were equally scorned by his critics: 1999 was labelled as too ambitious and self-indulgent, Purple Rain was labelled as a commercial sell-out, ATWIAD was labelled a Beatles rip-off, and Parade was labelled a vanity project etc.

I'd guess that 90% of the Prince album reviews I've ever read can be summarised in this sequence:

"Prince was cool, then he was not, and now this one's a 'return' of sorts, but it's not as good as when he was cool"

Followed by your typical non-bias 'three star' rating
[Edited 2/5/10 18:43pm]

I love going through those old articles too. Props to the site admins over there.

Regarding the topic, Sign O The Times as an album seemed to be less well received than it's singles by the press back then. Changing ones perspective on SOTT seems funny I guess, as I wouldn't consider the album to be the kind that "grows on you" over time, since it's songs are straight-forward Prince across the covered genres.

Logically though, perspective is based on a career-spanning catalog of work. The referenced review makes a comparison to Purple Rain, which was a pop benchmark at the time, so I think it was fair way to place the "new" album in terms it's readership might understand (though I disagreed then and now). Flash-forward to today's Prince discography and those same folks that might have been a tad harsh on SOTT have seen the less than stellar(in relative terms) output of recent years. With that perspective, the same reviewer probably places Sign O The Times quite high on the list of great Prince albums.

Hell, I thought Planet Earth was a heaping pile of dog vomit that couldn't possibly be surpassed in shititude until I heard Purple And Gold.

Exactly. I mean, this is not new trend. Critics were laying that kind of talk on Purple Rain.

skywalker said:

Reprinted with pemrission from original author:

Thinking back to Kurt Loders' review of SOTT that's always been with me in my
mind, he stated that the release failed to make "the grand statement". He also
referred to SOTT as "Prince's baffling brilliance. "I also remember at the end
of the review that he wondered why Prince didn’t just "go for it".

Reading DMSR there were 15-16 songs intended to be called Dream Factory. Would
this configuration have made the grand statement? Here’s what Dream Factory was
supposed to have:

Side one-
Visions, Dream Factory, Train, It.

Side two:
Strange Relationship, Starfish N Coffee, INTERLUDE, Slow Love, ICNTTPOYM,

side
three: The Cross, Last Heart Witness, Movie Star, All My Dreams.

Ten other songs were bandied about as part of Dream factory and later pulled etc. These
include A Place In Heaven, SOTT, Joy In Rep, Teacher Teacher, Large Room,
Wonderful Day, Slow Love, Big Tall Wall, Power Fantastic, and Crystal Ball.

Would adding these songs have made "the" grand statement? You have Visions as the opener, a serious instrumental to get the gist across, then Dream Factory,
Dot, and It. Seems like Dream Factory and Visions are the only thing with statement written on it. Side two you have Strange Relationship, Starfish, Interlude, Slow Love and ICNTTPOYM. This side has very strong songs. A more personal set of songs. Especially ending with ICNTTPOYM. Side 3 has The Cross for the lil Lets Go crazy type of preaching with equally enough guitar crunch as Lets Go Crazy, its just not a party type anthem, but never the less, in your face. Last Heart a personal song which could have turned into a catch-phrase. Witness 4 Prosecution is sorta strange to be included. Movie Star originally for Morris, yet works with Prince, playing off of his celluloid screen exploits, which would have been appropriate at the time. The ending with All My Dreams, a perfect "goodbye", pick me up life lesson, especially the ending lines "don’t ever lose your dreams".


I think what Loder was getting at was that their wasn’t much "power", i.e. guitar punch. Slipping in Large Room , replacing It, getting rid of Last Heart and using A Place In Heaven, Slow love in place of Witness would have made for a better flow and making more sense. And since he recorded most of ATWIAD before PR was even released as the monster that it was, this technically could have been the PR follow-up. If it had been, who knows what would've happened.
But it took making ATWIAD and Parade to get to the point of Dream Factory-SOTT type of brilliance. From "ALL" the members of the Revolution.

I personally thought he mad his grand statement and "went for it" with PR of course. Here he was heralded as the next Stevie Wonder on his first album, then he hit top 10 of his second release, came into his original freaky self with Dirty Mind, cruised into a larger audience with Controversy (more accessible?), and created his masterpiece 1999, which had those that were not bandwagoners eating out of his hands, waiting for what his next move was gonna be. And that was Purple Rain.

Here he makes his statement. Lets Go Crazy, the religious watch out beware, pick yourself up, the love lessons of Beautiful Ones, the rock of Computer Blue (years ahead of My Computer or computer generation), the Prince lasciviousness of Nikki, the never again-ess of When Doves Cry, the perfect pop of I Would Die 4 u, the triumphant Baby I’m A Star and the wind up Stairway To Heaven of the eighties Purple Rain (could be both good or bad).

Seems like his statement was already made by the time of SOTT. Asking for one in 1987 was asking for a statement from ALL members because by then and with songs from 1985-86, most were group efforts. Wendy and Lisa of course, other Melvoin’s, Sheilas' drumming, Leeds, Blistan and the other "cronies" to bounce off of for inspiration (Wally, Brooks, Cat, ,JJ etc).

So to answer Loder’s question of why doesn’t "he just go for it?"-well he did, in 1984. He went for it again on SOTT but with growth, restraints, etc added to the mix. What is missing though was the power of the guitar. The guitar was put on the backburner and brought up for specific use and embellishments, and oh how good those embellishments sounded.

Sometimes refraining from bombastic guitar makes it all the more sweeter when it does get a chance to peak out. Of course the backlash of his original audience etc lead to some of the guitar restraint, at least he got the chance to funnel that into sounds like Large Room, Power Fantastic, Slow Love, Dot Parker, etc.(he could only keep making Controversy for so long any ways). Now that the bull is all over, bring it all back, make another statement, before there is no one left to care. "Hurry there isn't much time". No more time for millennium mumbo jumbo: it's passed and we're still here. No room for bomb culture either (swipe), no one's going to drop the bomb. You gave us the soundtrack for the so called rapture-revelation, now give us a statement for this so called "dawn". And make it just as good.

IIRC the RS review of GB praised it as a return to form! (could've just been the Australian edition!).

I read some interesting reviews of SOTT that praised it a lot. However, it performed fairly dismally commercially and is uneven from a general public POV.

I agree, though, that I've always felt that reiews hold Prince up to a different benchmark than others, comparing him with previous output or some hypothetical idea of what his album should be (perfect?),

squirrelgrease said:

I bet that if "I could never take the place of your man" was the first single off SOTT, instead of SOTT (ie an update song rather than a stark one), the album would have been better received by the masses. as it is, SOTT is one of my favorite songs.
I love the Stones...I don't like all their songs or albums
I love the Beatles...there are some songs I don't like...
Prince is no different.
Has Bob Dylan been consistent? no